In a week, we head to visit the in-state university where our eldest has committed to spend the next four years of her life.
My wife, who feels each kid's pain at twice the intensity felt by the kid, fortunately also feels each kid's success with twice the delight. Her feet have not touched the ground since my daughter received her acceptance.
My daughter has only a vague recollection of the campus, which she has seen exactly once, five years ago, for a two hour stopover during a family road trip.
She likens it to being in an arranged marriage with a guy with a terrific reputation whom her friends tell her is very good-looking. She feels lucky, but also doesn't know what that ideal translates to in reality.
I'm excited for the opportunities that lay ahead - most importantly the chance to meet new people at a time when they are particularly receptive to novel friendships.
The first couple of weeks of my freshman year in college I used my status as leverage to walk up to strangers and introduce myself. When I reflect on all the other times in my life, none was as fertile as this two week period.
I was shameless - a guy I said hello to in the campus bookstore shook his head and told me how, where he grew up, you kept your head down and did not make eye contact.
I ran into him socially throughout college, and that moment of courage / recklessness formed the basis of an ongoing familiarity and a conversation lasting years.
This is something I'm seeking myself these days - novelty, exposure to people who have hit their creative grooves, conversations with those who live live and choose paths that are different than mine.
It's hard to convey to someone entering college how rare and precious such opportunities can be. The closest I can come to conveying it comes from a small corner of the Narnia books by C.S. Lewis.
In The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, one scene begins with a very out of place street lamp in the middle of a forest.
We find out later in the series when the world of Narnia was first created, a broken street lamp was hurtled into the middle of the forest, and because the world was new and still growing, the street lamp grew much as a broken branch might regenerate into a tree.
Planting the seeds of future friendships that cross conventional boundaries will never be easier, the obstacles will never be lower.